Book Review: Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

Former navy SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin wrote this book inspired by principles of combat to aid personal growth and improve business decisions. The similarities between war zones and daily life challenges are figuratively pictured in literature and movies (and to be perfectly frank it used to appeal to my taste in art/self-improvement genre).  Unsurprisingly, this book (and similar titles) sell so well. But let's get to the crux of the book:

The first-hand narrative of the battle and rules of engagement from the POV of seasoned seals and commanders is interesting and novel. In my opinion, the book is very well-balanced and maneuvers between a military narrative and a business/life lesson narrative. I might have a lot of issues with military functions across the board but I looked at this book purely from an analytical viewpoint, looking at the main subjects such as war, mission, battleground, and enemy as metaphors for daily life challenges. I don't subscribe to war and militaristic mentality, I have consistently and fervently condemned the military solutions globally. Therefore, I felt the book may be pleasantly interpreted as a philosophical lesson from a context that in essence is not pluralistic and progressive.

In brief, the book's flow can be nicely recapped by the titles of eight chapters:

I. Winning the war within: 

II. No bad teams, only bad leaders 

III. Believe

IV. Check the ego

V. Cover and Move

VI. Simple

VII. Prioritize and Execute

VIII. Decentralized command

This is my general overview of the book:

In a nutshell, the leader should take challenges by the scruff of the neck. They should act confidently and responsibly. They should own it (instead of throwing the subordinates under the boss and looking for scapegoats, see Chapter II). This demands stern faith in the project. If this core is well-seated, the sound rippling effect ensues and the whole team/personnel will follow. 

If the goal is the priority, this keeps a lot of toxic egoism in check (Chapter IV), as a wise leader sees the decision-making on the field as not immune to mistakes and off-the-chart over/underestimations. Therefore, the right mentality warrants openness to criticism and think tank-style pooling of ideas. 

Chapters realistically address the limitations of a leader in the real world. Especially in large companies it is impossible to micromanage every minute operation. This demands a leader choose his/her battles wisely and prioritize (Chapter VII). Also, the leader should cultivate a culture of ownership among subordinates and on many occasions, complex missions demand decentralized decision-making. This needs oversight of course but with faith and trust a team can benefit from this distributed leadership (Chapter VIII).

On multiple occasions, the book underlines the similarities between military battlefield and corporate industrial management. The heavy stress on group decisions and shared responsibilities in a collective effort is a key message for those who want to transplant lessons from war zones to their routines in business life.

Extreme Ownership is definitely not a masterpiece. Nevertheless, it is an insightful and pragmatic book with some first-hand stories from the front lines.

Pedram, December 9, 2024

Picture: Jocko Willink

WikiLeaks : 5 Basic Questions

The WikiLeaks controversy pits one hallowed purpose of US government – preventing security threats from abroad – against another, that of protecting constitutional rights of expression by the media and individuals. Striking that balance has become difficult in an age of the Internet hackers, bloggers, self-appointed public policy watchdogs, and thousands of online “publications” marked by ideology and attitude.

So far, WikiLeaks has released more than 700,000 sensitive or classified documents about US military and diplomatic activity – 92,000 on the war in Afghanistan, 392,000 on the Iraq war, and now nearly 250,000 diplomatic cables that US officials say are damaging to foreign relations and intelligence operations. Within weeks, WikiLeaks says, it’ll release inside information on business interests – starting with a major American bank.
Here are answers to five key questions by Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer  ThFire.com

1. Who is responsible for the leaks?
WikiLeaks describes itself as a “not-for-profit media organization” whose goal is to “bring important news and information to the public.” Launched in 2006, it is a loose network of individual leakers and advisers with a post office box at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. A shadowy, mostly volunteer organization, WikiLeaks operates on many servers and under domain names around the world. Much of its work is conducted from a rented house in Iceland.
Australian Julian Paul Assange is WikiLeaks' editor in chief and only spokesman. He is in his late 30s, studied physics, math, and computer programming, all of which made him an expert computer hacker. Mr. Assange seems to travel constantly, although not to the United States, sometimes altering his appearance to avoid being recognized or possibly arrested.
The other prominent name connected to WikiLeaks is US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. Manning was a military analyst in Iraq, where, despite his low rank, he had wide access to sensitive and classified information. Among other things, he allegedly downloaded and leaked video footage of an attack by a US Apache helicopter gunship that killed Iraqi civilians, including two employees of the Reuters news agency.
Manning was arrested in May and later charged with violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in conjunction with “transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system,” as well as “communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source.



2. How could so much classified information be stolen?
During the months Manning worked with the Army’s 10th Mountain Division in Iraq, it was apparently easy for him to find, download, and copy sensitive military information. Writing in an online chat, he claims to have had “unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months.”
“I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’ … erase the music … then write a compressed split file,” he wrote. “No one suspected a thing … I listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.”
“Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counterintelligence, inattentive signal analysis,” Manning wrote. “A perfect storm.”
“No one suspected a thing,” he wrote to a former computer hacker who eventually tipped off the FBI and Army officials. “I didn’t even have to hide anything.”
Officials have told the Associated Press that Manning is the prime suspect in the most recent leak of diplomatic cables. He is now awaiting court martial at the US Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. He faces up to 52 years in prison.


3. How did the information become public?
WikiLeaks provided the latest cache of 251,287 diplomatic cables to Der Spiegel, El País, Le Monde, and The Guardian newspapers. The New York Times, which had published earlier reports critical of Assange and Manning, was snubbed by WikiLeaks for this round of leaked documents. But the Guardian quickly passed along the leaked material to the Times.
In justifying the decision to publish reports on the leaked cables, New York Times editor Bill Keller offered this explanation:
“We have edited out any information that could identify confidential sources – including informants, dissidents, academics and human rights activists – or otherwise compromise national security,” he wrote in response to questions on the Times website. “We did this in consultation with the State Department, and while they strongly disapprove of the publication of classified material at any time, and while we did not agree with all of their requests for omission, we took their views very seriously indeed.” He also noted that the Times chose "a small selection of the cables – about 100 in all, out of a quarter of a million documents – that we think provide useful source material for the articles we have written.”


4. What information got released?
In July, WikiLeaks released some 92,000 documents on the war in Afghanistan, including information on civilian casualties, the strength of the Taliban, friendly fire episodes, and links between Pakistan’s intelligence services and the Taliban.
Three months later, WikiLeaks disclosed nearly 392,000 US Army field reports – the largest military leak in US history – dubbed the “Iraq War Logs.” Among other things, the information included details of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners, secret civilian death counts, Iran’s involvement with Shiite militias operating in Iraq, tensions between Kurds and Arabs in northern Iraq, and new information about three American hikers arrested along the Iraq-Iran border and taken to Iran.
Of the 250,000 confidential and secret diplomatic cables released Nov. 28, 15,652 are classified as “secret.” Of those, 4,330 also are labeled “NOFORN,” meaning they should not be seen by foreign nationals. The frankly worded cables revealed US spying on United Nations officials, included disparaging remarks about national leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and recounted Saudi Arabia’s urging the US to attack Iran over that nation’s nuclear program.


5. Could this kind of leak happen again?
Unless the US changes how it distributes and tracks sensitive information, the short answer is “yes.”
After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, agencies began sharing information that previously had been “stove-piped.” At the same time, the number of individuals with access to classified information via the secure Secret Internet Protocol Router Network grew to nearly 2.5 million people (most of them at the Defense Department). Manning was one such person
“Obviously that aperture went too wide,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Pentagon reporters recently. The Pentagon is now tightening controls on classified information. For example, classified computers will be “read-only,” preventing the use of thumb drives and other removable media to copy and walk away with sensitive data.
The State Department and other agencies, too, are tightening information-sharing. Moreover, the White House has directed government entities that handle classified information to review their "implementation of procedures for safeguarding classified information against improper disclosures.”

Hacker Threatens More Attacks On WikiLeaks Foes

On Thursday, a man identifying himself as one of the activists from a group called Anonymous, who used the pseudonym Coldblood in an interview with BBC radio, said: “This campaign is not over from what I’ve seen. It’s still going strong.” The speaker had an English accent and said he was a 22-year-old software engineer with no specific political loyalty.
Within 12 hours of a British judge’s decision on Tuesday to deny Mr. Assange bail in a Swedish extradition case, attacks on the Web sites of WikiLeaks’s “enemies,” as defined by the organization’s impassioned supporters around the world, caused several corporate Web sites to become inaccessible or slow down markedly.
Targets of the attacks, in which activists overwhelmed the sites with traffic, included the Web site of MasterCard, which had stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks; Amazon.com, which revoked the use of its computer servers; and PayPal, which stopped accepting donations for Mr. Assange’s group. Visa.com was also affected by the attacks, as were the Web sites of the Swedish prosecutor’s office and the lawyer representing the two women whose allegations of sexual misconduct are the basis of Sweden’s extradition bid.
The Internet assaults underlined the growing reach of self-described “cyberanarchists,” antigovernment and anticorporate activists who have made an icon of Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian.
Though Reuters said that no major Web sites appeared to be under attack early Thursday, a Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, reported that the Swedish government’s Web site had gone down briefly during the night.
The speed and range of the attacks appeared to show the resilience of the backing among computer activists for Mr. Assange, who has appeared increasingly isolated in recent months amid the furor stoked by WikiLeaks’s posting of hundreds of thousands of secret Pentagon documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr. Assange has come under renewed attack in the past two weeks for posting the first tranche of a trove of 250,000 secret State Department cables that have exposed American diplomats’ frank assessments of relations with many countries, forcing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to express regret to world leaders and raising fears that they and other sources would become more reticent.
The New York Times and four other news organizations last week began publishing articles based on the archive of cables made available to them.
In recent months, some of Mr. Assange’s closest associates in WikiLeaks abandoned him, calling him autocratic and capricious and accusing him of reneging on WikiLeaks’s original pledge of impartiality to launch a concerted attack on the United States. He has been simultaneously fighting a remote battle with the Swedish prosecutors, who have sought his extradition for questioning on accusations of “rape, sexual molestation and forceful coercion” made by the Swedish women. Mr. Assange has denied any wrongdoing in the cases.
American officials have repeatedly said that they are reviewing possible criminal charges against Mr. Assange, a step that could lead to a bid to extradite him to the United States and confront him with having to fight for his freedom on two fronts.
The cyberattacks in Mr. Assange’s defense appear to have been coordinated by Anonymous, a loosely affiliated group of activist computer hackers who have singled out other groups before, including theChurch of Scientology. Last weekend, members of Anonymous vowed in two online manifestos to take revenge on any organization that lined up against WikiLeaks.
Anonymous claimed responsibility for the MasterCard attack in Web messages and, according to one activist associated with the group, conducted waves of attacks on other companies during the day. The group said the actions were part of an effort called Operation Payback, which began as a way of punishing companies that tried to stop Internet file-sharing and movie downloads.
The activist, Gregg Housh, who disavows a personal role in any illegal online activity, said that 1,500 supporters had been in online forums and chat rooms organizing the mass “denial of service” attacks. His account was confirmed by Jose Nazario, a senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, a Chelmsford, Mass., firm that tracks malicious activity on computer networks.
Most of the corporations whose sites were targeted did not explain why they severed ties with WikiLeaks. But PayPal issued statements saying its decision was based on “a violation” of its policy on promoting illegal activities.
Almost all the corporate Web sites that were attacked appeared to be operating normally later on Wednesday, suggesting that any economic impact was limited. But the sense of an Internet war was reinforced when Netcraft, a British Internet monitoring firm, reported that the Web site being used by the hackers to distribute denial-of-service software had been suspended by a Dutch hosting firm, Leaseweb.
A sense of the belligerent mood among activists was given when one contributor to a forum the group uses, WhyWeProtest.net, wrote of the attacks: “The war is on. And everyone ought to spend some time thinking about it, discussing it with others, preparing yourselves so you know how to act if something compels you to make a decision. Be very careful not to err on the side of inaction.”
Mr. Housh acknowledged that there had been online talk among the hackers of a possible Internet campaign against the two women who have been Mr. Assange’s accusers in the Swedish case, but he said that “a lot of people don’t want to be involved.”
A Web search showed new blog posts in recent days in which the two women, identified by the Swedish prosecutors only as Ms. A. and Ms. W., were named, but it was not clear whether there was any link to Anonymous. The women have said that consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange became nonconsensual when he stopped using condoms.
The cyberattacks on corporations Wednesday were seen by many supporters as a counterstrike against the United States. Mr. Assange’s online supporters have widely condemned the Obama administration as the unseen hand coordinating efforts to choke off WikiLeaks by denying it financing and suppressing its network of computer servers.
Mr. Housh described Mr. Assange in an interview as “a political prisoner,” a common view among WikiLeaks supporters who have joined Mr. Assange in condemning the sexual abuse accusations as part of an American-inspired “smear campaign.”
Another activist used the analogy of the civil rights struggle for the cyberattacks.
“Are they disrupting business?” a contributor using the name Moryath wrote in a comment on the slashdot.org technology Web site. “Perhaps, but no worse than the lunch counter sit-ins did.”

John Markoff and Ashlee Vance contributed reporting from San Francisco, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
NYTIMES

Green Zone

Year : 2010
Directed by : Paul Greengrass
I watched Green Zone with Ardeshir last night. It can be categorized as modern anti-war movies in criticism of  Iraq war .Weapons of mass destruction is sited as the main objective in military operation in middle eastern country .But as the  missions progress several speculations and reports turns out to be deceptive .The movie is based on a solid ground of valid knowledge  about current vulnerable equilibrium of power and prominence of tribal structure. Therefore i 'd rather rank the movie  higher than pure-action type.Green Zone represents an anti-war insight which questions the truthful concern behind the troubled invasion.On the other hand the movie lean too much on Matt Damon's starring . In my opinion the role defined for Damon as a chief warrant officer is a little bit exaggerated .A hunt for truth solely lead by Damon in the context of iraq war chaos is unrealistic.
a 6/10

The Hurt Locker

It was really a high quality and honest  picture;probably best movie i've seen about Iraq war.As i followed the global acceptance of the movie;i'm glad it opened its way to commercial success as well.
I really hope Kathryn Bigelow win the Academy Award.
The opening scenes about 10 minutes of spinechilling operation;disposing of an improvised explosive device.
the first time I watched the movie was about 8 months ago;then like many other movies i watched it  for the second time ;more in depth ;i have tosay the movie really deserves watching carefully.
I guess the movie carries a horrific message of post-war crisis;a modern  emotional distress Soldiers Facing death every 365 days of a year,Under to much pressure life lost its meaning as they edge closer to death experience...
Sergeant James ;shows a total indifference to death.His behavior leads a team of elite soldier to the edge.
What brings a man to this level?
I was wondering wether we must call him "A brave soldier" or "dumb anhedonic pschopath "!
i mean knowing the dynamics of war thereisn't any positive aspect,no winner,it really doesn't level to prosperity ;considering all the PTSD caused by wars;human nation is  the big loser .

Major Dismisses Blair's Reasoning

The former prime minister Sir John Major has condemned as "inadequate" his successor Tony Blair's justification for the Iraq war.

Major criticised Blair's handling of the war and his presentation of the case for invasion in March 2003. He said the Chilcott inquiry into the Iraq war was raising serious questions about the justification for the invasion and whether the government knew at the time that Saddam Hussein no longer had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Major dismissed the argument recently put forward by Blair that the Iraqi dictator was a bad man and needed to be removed.

Major said it now seemed there were doubts before the invasion about WMD in Iraq. "The suspicion arises that this was more about regime change than it was about weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Major said he wanted to know whether the cabinet had known about those doubts before the decision to take military action. Doubts about the motivation for the war had done more damage to trust in the UK political system than the MPs' expenses scandal, he said.

Major said he had reluctantly supported the invasion because at the time he believed Blair that Saddam's regime represented a threat because it had WMD.

"I had myself been prime minister in the first Gulf war and I knew when I said something I was utterly certain that it was correct, and I said less than I knew," he said.

"I assumed the same thing had happened and on that basis I supported reluctantly the second Iraq war."

Major said that in the mid-1990s aides to Bill Clinton had raised the idea of regime change in Iraq with UK officials. Major's government responded that any attempt to remove Saddam had to be legal and viable.

"There are many bad men around the world who run countries and we don't topple them, and indeed in earlier years we had actually supported Saddam Hussein when he was fighting against Iran," Major said.

"The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change."

Last month Blair said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of WMD and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public. In a TV interview he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

The Chilcot inquiry has seen a number of previously leaked Whitehall documents suggesting Blair was in favour of regime change. He is due to give evidence to the inquiry over the next few weeks.

@Guardian